Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929

Description

Greek Epigram in Reception is a chronological survey of the reception history of the Greek Anthology, a Byzantine collection of ancient Greek short poems known as epigrams. Tracing the strange evolution of the Greek Anthology from the early nineteenth century to the years after the first World War, the volume analyses the complex webs of rhetoric that are spun as writers and translators bring their different agendas to bear on the Anthology's text, pruning it to meet their needs. As so little was known about its poets, and because it stood for the "Anthology" of the Greeks and their culture, the text became the battleground during the 1870s-90s on which normative and dissident interpretations of Ancient Greece were fought out. An emergent mass readership became caught between opposing and rhetorically loaded accounts, casting the Anthology and thus the ancient race on whom the British were supposed to be modelling themselves as patriots and doting spouses or lovers of male Beauty, like the Decadent sensation Oscar Wilde. The after-effects of this cultural war were to stretch into the 1920s, and still echo today. Cover Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805–1929 Copyright Acknowledgements Contents Introduction 1. GREECE AND THE VICTORIANS: HERITAGE, MEMORY, TRAUMA 2. CONTESTING MEMORY: THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY AND RADICAL CLASSICS 3. THE ANCIENT GENRE, ITS TRANSMISSION, AND ITS PUBLICATION 4. CHUNKING THE ARCHIVE: EPIGRAM BETWEEN READERSHIPS 5. FRAGMENTARY LIVES: DOMESTICATING THE ANTHOLOGY 6. SEX, ART, AND DEATH: GREEK EPIGRAM IN AND OUT OF POMPEII 7. EPIGRAM AS SOCIAL PRACTICE AND POLITICAL STATEMENT 8. CONTROVERSY AND DISCIPLINE: A STATEMENT OF METHOD 9. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: HOW THE ANTHOLOGY WAS FRAMED Part I: The Descent from Olympus 1: The Miscellanies of Bland and Merivale 1. ‘BE MINE TO WREATHE’: FROM ANTHOLOGY TO MISCELLANY 2. ‘SOME WITHER’D SHRUB, OF POW’R MALIGN’: PREFACE AND PROLOGUE 3. ‘A GUILTY EXCESS’: REDEEMING MELEAGER IN THE PREFACE 4. ‘POOR LOST ELIZA!’: THE ANTHOLOGY IN ENGLISH DRESS 5. REVIEWING THE ANTHOLOGY 6. ANTHOLOGIZING THE REVIEWS 7. ‘A SIFTING COLLECTION’: EPIGRAM’S CHANGING WORLD 2: Three Mid-Century ‘Anthologies’ 1. ‘A FAULTY AND INJUDICIOUS ARRANGEMENT’: SIZES AND SCHEMES 2. ‘FRUSTRATED BY VAGUENESS’: THREE MID-CENTURY HISTORIES OF GREEK LITERATURE Talfourd, Blomfield, et al., History of Greek Literature (2nd edn, 1850) Browne, A History of Classical Literature (1851–3) Mure, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Antient Greece (1850–7) 3. ‘A PUBLIC EVIL’: WELLESLEY’S ANTHOLOGIA POLYGLOTTA (1849) 4. AN ETON MESS: GEORGE BURGES’S GREEK ANTHOLOGY (1852) 5. ‘A HARD CLOG’: ROBERT MACGREGOR’S GREEK ANTHOLOGY (1864) 6. CONCLUSION Part II: Wilde’s Meleager 3: ‘The Most Precious Relic’ 1. ‘THIS WORLD OF PHANTOMS’: ET IN ATTICA, EGO 2. SYMONDS AS OXFORD CLASSICIST 3. AESTHETICS OF DESIRE: SYMONDS, PATER,AND ‘WINCKELMANN’ 4. BEATING THE CURVE: STUDIES, PASTORAL, AND EPIGRAM 5. ‘THE MOST VALUABLE RELIC’: POETS IN A NEW LANDSCAPE 6. ALPINE CONNOTATIONS 1: THE NORTH FACE OF AESCHYLUS 7. THE ANTHOLOGY MEETS ITS PUBLIC 8. STYLES OF EROS: MELEAGER, STRATO, RUFINUS 9: ALPINE CONTEXTS 2: ‘THE SOUL GROWS CLOTTED BY CONTAGION’ 10. CONCLUSION: ONWARD AND UPWARD 4: ‘The True Liber Amoris at Last’ 1. EPIGRAM FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY: LORD CHARLES NEAVES, THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY (1874) 2. SWELLING AND BURNS: DOCTORING THE ANTHOLOGY 3. TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND THE WORDSWORTHIAN WAY 4. SAME TEXT, DIFFERENT BOOK: THE EDITIONS OF STUDIES 5. WILDE TIMES: STUDIES AND THE FIN DE SIÈCLE 6. MELEAGER TAKES THE STAND 7. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL? Part III: ‘The Book of Greek Life’ 5: Responses to Symonds 1. ‘INTO A PURER AIR’: JEBB’S GROWTH AND INFLUENCE (1893) 2. ‘ALL THE BEST’: MACKAIL’S SELECT EPIGRAMS 3. GATHERING IN THE WHEAT 4. MACKAIL’S GOSPEL: THE NEW BOOK OF LIFE 5. THE WHOLE LYRE OF PASSION? MACKAI LAND GREEK LOVE 6. EPIGRAMS AND EMPIRE: MACKAIL’S LEGACY 7. LOST BOYS: ‘OSWALD’ AND RODD The Anthology in Evolution 6: Reed and Girdle: The Anthology in the 1920s 1. ET IN ARCADIA . . . 2. HATING DAN CUPID: AN ANTHOLOGY FOR ROUTLEDGE 3. THE ANTHOLOGY AND THE NEW CRITICS 4. ‘NEARER PAN’S GREAT SOUL’: WALLACE RICE’S PAGAN PICTURES (1927) PAN PIPES HELIODORA DEAD 5. ‘THE GREAT ROLLING STONE OF GREECE’: SHANE LESLIE’S GREEK ANTHOLOGY (1929) 6. PROLEPSIS: MELEAGER AND THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR 7. CONCLUSION: THE HIGHGATE CAROLLER; LESLIE’S EVIL TWIN Conclusion 1. PAN’S AFTERMATH: THE ANTHOLOGY IN LATER TRANSLATIONS i. ‘Goodbye, Vile Canting Puritan’: The return of Strato ii. Ghost Flowers: Translating and explaining the Anthology in the later twentieth century 2. HOW TO BURY A POET, SPEAKING FIGURATIVELY 3. GREEK GENIUS ON DEMAND: POSTMODERN ANTHOLOGY ENVOI APPENDIX: Symonds and the Language of Gems References Index